Spice of Life: From flights of fancy to dreams taking off
My desire to catch a flight someday found its ground when the once trailblazing invention by ‘Wright Brothers’ mentioned in our school textbook spiritedly tickled my fancies. Little did I know then that from flying a modest paper plane, I would, decades later, fly aboard a real plane!
A gust of happiness flurried through my heart. My flailing arms apparently mirrored fluttering wings as my first confirmed air ticket from Chandigarh to Mumbai landed in my palms.
My desire to catch a flight someday found its ground when the once trailblazing invention by ‘Wright Brothers’ mentioned in our school textbook spiritedly tickled my fancies. Little did I know then that from flying a modest paper plane, I would, decades later, fly aboard a real plane!
My mood, in microseconds, alternated between deep delight & incredible wonder as I muddled my way through check-in formalities. Meandering their way all about the terminal, meticulously engineered elephantine flying machines lavishly paraded their streamlined looks. Their long, erect, and elaborate wings fanned out in spectacular display stimulated me into guessing which one I’d be flying aboard soon. The noise of their heavy engines sounded melody to my ears as I stood stock-still, studying marvellously at their every little to insignificant manoeuvre, be it how a civil aircraft assumed its position, smoothly taxied down the runway, and took off before retracting its landing-gear to eventually flying high into the clouds.
To witness a far-flung plane, in full-flight, loom out of dense clouds and dip its nose was surreal as within minutes it pulled out its wheels, signalling touch-down any moment. Sparking friction of those oversized spinning wheels against landing strip injected a heavy dose of thrill into my heart before they decelerated gradually to a screeching halt.
Countable flight of steps on boarding stairs, leading to the aircraft’s door, morphed me into a king climbing his way up into heavens and receiving a regal welcome from winsome angelic hostesses flashing a warm and friendly smile with their hands folded in traditional ‘Namaste’.
As if the tide of excitement rising within me wasn’t enough, now hair rose on my arms as my aircraft rose off the ground to take-off. My window seat offered a bird’s eye view of the expansive spread of ‘City Beautiful’ down; its inhabitants, buildings, roads, roundabouts et al began shrinking fast to tiny dots.
Elevation of thousands of feet above the sea-level not only dwarfed the ranges of gigantic mountains into rolls of tiny mounds plus large rivers into slender drains, but conversely, it also broadened my mind’s horizon to wish for a ‘borderless’ Earth, with no hostility among humans and their nations. Our plane’s further ascend into the firmament clicked one song ‘Aaj main upar, asmaan neeche..’ (Today, I’m above, sky is below) in my mind’s reel before it sailed linearly across an ocean of delicate airy clouds.
The naughty child within me egged me on to experience how one felt to relieve at dizzying heights. In lavatory, my madcap idiosyncratic act observed naively in lighter vein on a ‘flight mode’ released feel-good dopamine in my brain into the bargain against sound of the flush. My aerial voyage in cloud cuckoo land passed away in a momentary flash as the magnificent vista of towering skyline dotting the city of dreams ‘Mumbai’ welcomed with its lavish arms.
My first flight of delight not only took off to unimaginable and uncatchable height, but it also made blissful landing into my heart’s hangar as a deeply treasured subjective memory equalling worth of a highly valued first-of-its-kind pearl tucked over-protectively within an oyster’s shell.
The writer is a freelance contributor based in Una and can be reached at unsharma3116@gmail.com.
